The Exchanges

Q What was the premise of the piece? Yeah.

A The premise of the piece was that it actually was controversial on numerous counts, but the basic premise was it was the first legal argument anybody had made. That if the government is pressuring a private actor to do something that the government couldn't do directly, that that was still state action. Now, the subtext is this was in the wake of January sixth, when there was widespread systematic censorship of, you know, political speech in this country, at least I believe there was. And so at the time I made that argument, it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory on the facts. No, that's not happening. It was also dismissed as a legal theory. You know, this Rube who, you know, happened to go to law school forgot his first year where the first amendment only applies to state actors. You know, now fast forward three years, two and a half years. We now know those facts were far worse than even I envisioned at the time. And actually the legal argument that I made is now popularized by Clarence Thomas and others that are finding its way into our jurisprudence. But anyway, three advisors to the company found it so offensive that I would make this argument in public that within 48 hours of that piece, they resigned. And that was definitely a post Jan six mood and reaction. That I had to then make a choice, right? Because now this is having potentially an adverse impact on the company…

AI assessment note: “the basic premise was it was the first legal argument anybody had made”

Q to, uh, trim that. But to Chamath's next point, you know, we have ten million job openings. We're not letting anybody in. How would you look at immigration? Obviously, we have people coming in the southern border illegally, and then we have H-one B visas, and now Canada is saying, hey, we'll steal all those H-one Bs. We'll take them. So how do you look at immigration to Chamath's question?

A Merit-based immigration. I mean, one of the things that Canada does have, and I'm not a fan of America imitating Canada or anything like this in, in most respects, but they do have a point-based system, right? They have a point-based system. And so I think the point-based system should work differently in the US, but I do favor merit-based immigration. I'm a little bit of a departure from what I think is the Republican consensus here. You know, people I respect, Tom Cotton and others have proposed bills with a hard cap on the number of immigrants. I think it's a mistake. I think that the cap should declare itself based on how many people meet the meritocratic criteria.

AI assessment note: “I think that the cap should declare itself based on how many people meet the meritocratic criteria.”

Q has manifested in every generation with this point of view that there is some psychological torment that has taken over the young people that is causing them to act out from beatniks to hippies, to punks, to goth, to emo, and every generation had some cultural representation. Is your point of view that gender dysphoria is the current manifestation of that pattern of behavior that we've seen over the generations?

A That's not exactly my view. My view is that it's not limited to young people. I think there's something unique going on in America right now. It's true of all of us. In some sense, some of this comes from self-reflection, but I think it's, it's true for most of us that we're hungry to be part of something bigger than ourselves, yet we cannot even answer What it means to be an American or what it means to believe in God or what God is. And we have come up with new false idols that substitute for that. So you want to talk about generational history. I mean, you know, Moses, by the time he comes down from the mountaintop, you got the golden calf. Israelites are lost in the desert. They say they want to go back and be ruled by the Pharaoh. Yeah. I think that the historical trend I'm talking about is a slightly different one and maybe has a longer arc to it than the one you're talking about, but I, but am I, Diagnosis is not specific to young people. It's specific to where we are in a national history. When like a bunch of blind bats in a cave, right? How does a bat figure out where it is? It sends out echolocation signals, sonar signals that come back and say, this is where I am. I think we human beings are wired to do the same thing. And the pillars, the walls, the fixed points of truth from family to faith, to patriotism, to hard work, to individual pride, the things that used to…

AI assessment note: “That's not exactly my view. My view is that it's not limited to young people.”

Q to talk to you like a human being. So the extent that, you know, as a politician, now you can talk like a human being the audience and we would appreciate it. Meet David Sachs, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg. All right, Vivek, why don't you explain maybe your background as a capital allocator and as an entrepreneur, and then why you chose to run for president at this time?

A Yeah, sure. I mean, my, my parents, like many people, you probably also know who've had similar success stories. They came to this country with almost no money. I went on to actually found successful companies. And so I started my career as a biotech investor. I worked at a hedge fund in New York when I graduated in 2007. I thought I was going to be a scientist. I studied molecular biology, ended up enjoying my time as an internship at a hedge fund a lot more than that. So I did that for seven years. Three of those years I spent law school at the same time, but then when I finished law school, I had, you know, I think felt like my learning curve had flattened from being a pure capital allocator. So I stepped down and founded a new kind of biotech company that I could, actually, you guys might be more interested in it than most of my political audiences, but the basic premise was give scientists skin in the game in the projects they actually work on. So if you're a GSK or advisor or whatever, Merck, You discover a drug or you develop it. You don't have personal upside in the individual drug that you develop. You do have various forms of asymmetric downside. And so people don't take risks unless they're the same risks that the other pharma companies are taking, because if you take the same risk and fail, but everybody else is failing in a therapeutic category at the same time, yo…

AI assessment note: “I started my career as a biotech investor. I worked at a hedge fund”

Q If you were going to replace race and gender And these kind of things, what would be your, uh, you know, qualities or things to focus on?

A So let's do like a little face off right into talking about race, gender, sexuality, climate. I pair them up against individual family nation God. Okay. And I think that there's a substantive vision here. I think America happened to have been founded on the latter vision, not the former. So if I'm running for us president, I think that that already tilts the scales in favor of this vision, because it so happens as a historical matter, America was grounded on, you know, some people will contest this, but I think on that vision rather than the genetic and climate based one. But I think that that's something where the Republican party and conservatives have fallen short. And that's part of what So your question, Jason, pulled me into this, is I saw the emergence of what was likely to be a biographical brawl between two guys who are the, you know, front runners or whatever. You know, that's not productive. But I think more importantly than a biographical brawl, even the question about who we are, I think the Republican Party and the conservative movement was in many ways defining itself in opposition to that alternative vision of identity, where what I want to do, what I'm striving to do, and I hope we're doing, Is actually offering an affirmative vision of our own that go to the heart of what it means to be an American. And, you know, I don't think that national identity alone is …

AI assessment note: “I pair them up against individual family nation God.”

Q deficit and by many projections, social security will be bankrupt in anywhere from 10 to 15 years. Uh, 10 to 20 years, whatever numbers you want to use. The CBO assumes we're going to have unsustainable spiraling debt. What is your point of view on where we are in the cycle, how it's manifesting today, and how we're going to deal with the fiscal issues that arise from these movements?

A Yeah, so I think where we are in that, in the cycle, I don't take that as a passive law of physics. I think that who runs this country and leads this country can make an actual difference in the actual underlying course of that so-called cycle, which is part of what pulls me into this. So I'm a little bit unconventional on, uh, my views on the debt load and the entitlement spending in this country and our first step in our way out of it. I don't think we're at a place of having remotely enough consensus or trust, and I think trust is probably the more important word than consensus, to begin just snip snip make cuts to what people feel like they were entitled to and promised, especially in a moment where we're beginning with deep distrust, that will take what you call those populist flames and throw kerosene on it. I do, I'm more optimistic about this, and I think this is quite realistic actually, is that the next leap forward is we can grow our way out of, I'm not going to say all, but most of our actual fiscal calamity, pending fiscal calamity, right? This year, I mean, I think like right now, last six months, we're talking less than 1.5% annualized GDP growth, what we're averaging right now. For most of our national history, we actually grown at over four plus percent GDP growth. Certainly, if you go back to the pre-gold standard period, and even after going off the gold stan…

AI assessment note: “we can grow our way out of, I'm not going to say all, but most”

Q What did he get wrong and what, and was the election stolen?

A Yeah. So, so, I mean, I gave you like small examples of what he got wrong, but I think the real care, the real thing that he got wrong I'm not sure that getting wrong is the, even framing, it's just a fact that 30% of this country became psychiatrically ill, and you're the leader of this country, you're leading a nation. And so you can decide whose fault that is, but I believe leaders are ultimately judged by their results. And for whatever reason, even when I'm saying the same things that Trump often did as a matter of policy or foreign policy or domestic economic policy, and maybe it's because people don't, don't yet know me broadly, but I don't think that's it actually. I don't think I'm having that effect on people. And I think that that's why I'm in this race to carry forward unapologetic George Washington, America first policies, and to do so more successfully, but also in a way that unites the country around that vision more so than Donald Trump ever did or could in a second term was the election stolen. Here's the sense in which I think the election was stolen in a data-driven way. I have not seen any data to suggest that the ballot fraud or anything like that would have been sufficient to overturn the ballot count of the ballots. I have not seen any evidence to that effect. What I do see is hard evidence that people in this country would have elected a different presid…

AI assessment note: “I have not seen any data to suggest that the ballot fraud or anything like that”

Q So even if the parents and doctors agreed with it, you would say they can't make that decision for the child?

A Just like you can't get a tattoo before the age of 18 in most, what we say is a decision that you are likely to regret, many, in many cases at least, likely to regret later in life, we let you make that decision as an adult. And I do believe we live in a free society. As an adult, you're free to identify how you want, are free to wear what you want. But kids aren't the same as adults, and even among adults, there's a difference between living your life freely and expecting that everybody else changes their linguistic and traditional understandings in sports and traditional understandings in locker rooms and traditional understandings in language. That's a difference. And so I don't believe in a tyranny of the majority, but I don't believe in a tyranny of the minority either.

AI assessment note: “Just like you can't get a tattoo before the age of 18”

Q a result cast in this negative light consistently by the, um, by, by these sorts of writers. So what is your strategy to win this race? Given the, is it not important as Trump showed in the last election cycle to have those Republican establishment ties? Or are you going to be building bridges? And then my follow-up question is if you don't win, what are you going to do?

A Yeah. So let me, uh, let me address the first. It's basically in the camp that I don't think it's the voters that ultimately matter. Not the people who have appointed themselves in the reigning establishment, or it's not even the establishment anymore. It's an outdated establishment that I don't think actually is going to influence meaningfully the result of this election, except for one respect, which is money, which I'll get back to. So the area where we're punching above our weight, right? Debates haven't even happened yet. You know, at least in the last week, I'm third in most of the national polls. This is well ahead of even where we planned to be, right? We planned to be in third by November, December, ahead of the Iowa caucuses, ahead of New Hampshire, overperform expectations in both of those, use the momentum to then win the race. That was broadly the strategy with the debate stage as the play, as the way where I would steadily work my way into that. I think we're just now on a different curve where, you know, we might be in second place by then and by a smaller margin than people expected. I think the debate stage is critical. The campaign strategy is actually to combine the initial investment that, because I've lived the American dream I was able to make, but to combine that with a true grassroots uplift. We've got close to 70,000, maybe more, I have to check the exa…

AI assessment note: “So let me, uh, let me address the first.”

Q Well, if you, if you think about what the IRA does for energy, and frankly, if you just roll up the BIL chips and IRA, I'm just curious your thoughts on whether government incentives are moving in that direction. That you actually support, or you still think it's, it's missing something?

A Well, so one of the things that I actually focus on, and I think it's really important, is What can the U S president actually do? I mean, president Trump's, I don't know if people remember this, his main promise, uh, policy promise was actually repeal and replace Obamacare, which never happened because it required going through Congress. So I'm actually focused on elements that I can deliver on without asking Congress either for permission or forgiveness. And so that's why my answer to Jason was I go straight to at least let's focus on actually the administrative state, which on my reading of the constitution reports in to the single duly elected president. So when I talk about the permitting process at the Department of Interior, or shutting down the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, I believe in, you know, we could go, I'm going into details on it tonight. I have the legal authority to do that as the US President. I think the legislation is gonna be much more complicated, and I don't believe that I can be in a position to promise what we would do legislatively to any of that.

AI assessment note: “I don't believe that I can be in a position to promise what we would do legislatively”

Q What is your explanation for that? And how does that ever get solved?

A I mean, how are we going to fix it? I'm going to give you a facile answer, David. It has to do with why we're doing what we're doing. I want to be elected the next president. I think I will be, and I think reflecting the will of the people in the way this country is governed is part of how our system is actually supposed to work, both in the primary and in the general election. And so, you know, I know we're sitting in different seats, but I'm sitting in the seat that I am now precisely because I think somebody needs to actually step up and fix it when most of the Republican party has lock, stock, and barrel for all their, their criticisms of Biden on the most important foreign policy matter of right now. Have lock, stock, and barrel adopted what is effectively the Biden position, which is mysterious, and it's interesting. Now, I think that it has become a, a sort of a A fixation, not because these candidates, I think, have arrived at this viewpoint independently through reasoning their way to it, but just understanding that that's what they are supposed to say in the tradition of a party that was historically based on projecting hard power through deterring the USSR, not recognizing the fact that people sometimes seem to forget this fact, the USSR doesn't exist anymore, and NATO, which is created to Contained the USSR has now expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than i…

AI assessment note: “understanding that that's what they are supposed to say in the tradition of a party”

Q Have people ever reached out and tried to build bridges with you?

A We've talked backstage. I mean, most of us, when we intersect each other, we're speaking at the same forums, the NRA, the family leader thing that Tucker did backstage. We have interactions with all the other candidates. And I like to think I'm friendly with everybody. Um, you know, I don't know how, you know, I haven't talked to Ron recently, but I've talked to him more before. But I think the reality is, uh, yeah, so Dave, what you said is definitely true. And I'm not in this to be a political analyst, right? I'm in this to state what my beliefs are, say who I am and people can vote for me or not. But I actually do think, I don't think that Trump's commentary on the other candidates is having so much of an effect. I think voters, many people who were maybe initially behind the Sanis, I know many of them are people who are part of that traditional establishment that didn't want, that most of them didn't want to have nothing to do with Trump, but decided that that was the next best thing. So I don't think that Trump's attacks are going to persuade them one way or another. I think it comes down to the study of what happened in 2016, right? Scott Walker, great governor. Really respect the guy. And I like what he's doing in his post elected office life as well. But everybody has a role to play in reviving this country. And I think we all have to look ourselves in the mirror and as…

AI assessment note: “We've talked backstage. I mean, most of us, when we intersect each other”